Your Brain is a Time Machine by Dean Buonomano (PDF)

Description

A leading neuroscientist embarks on a groundbreaking exploration of how time works inside the brain. In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables “mental time travel” – simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. The brain was designed to navigate our continuously changing world by predicting what will happen and when. Buonomano combines neuroscience expertise with a far-ranging, multidisciplinary approach. With engaging style, he illuminates such concepts as consciousness, spacetime, and relativity while addressing profound questions that have long occupied scientists and philosophers alike. What is time? Is our sense of time’s passage an illusion? Does free will exist, or is the future predetermined? In pursuing the answers, Buonomano reveals as much about the fascinating architecture of the human brain as he does about the intricacies of time itself. This virtuosic work of popular science leads to an astonishing realization: Your brain is, at its core, a time machine.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Dean Buonomano is a professor of neurobiology and psychology at UCLA and a leading theorist on the neuroscience of time. His previous book, Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The subject matter wasn’t one I was familiar with. However, I was intrigued by the book.

⭐This is a very good book about a central question in physics, philosophy and psychology. The author does a fine job of explaining the current states of knowledge in terms I can understand as a layman and also leaving many of the deep mysteries well-defined but unsolved.I have read a lot on the subject and this book is an excellent overview. It is humbling to remember that there may be limits to our actual ability to understand some phenomena and laws of the universe.

⭐Unfortunately, this book is unfocused. Time is such a ubiquitous topic that it comes up in almost every discipline—and the author tries to cover them all in this book. From evolution to relativity to free will. If you read 1-2 pop-sci books a year, maybe you will enjoy this. However, if you consider yourself well read, get ready to hear a bunch of stuff you’ve heard before. The book is a missed opportunity to dig into the nuances of time and neuroscience, and instead, just grazes the surface, ultimately leaving the reader with a pile of tidbits that lack depth. If you have never thought about time, you will appreciate the grand overview.

⭐I loved how the author managed to explain the process of change in general, with time being just one of its applications, and then expand further into physics and even psychology.

⭐Superbly written. I like whatever Carllo writes. Fond of him. He explains it so nicely.

⭐a good solid read on the subject, but i admit when authors use “…as i will explain in later chapters” ugh! once is acceptable, but more than that is annoying. this became annoyingbut…the later chapters did indeed pay off. a decent take on the subject

⭐Discusses the complexity of the concept of time and possible explanations taken from the worlds of neurobiology–studies of the brain in particular– and new theories in physicsA particularly interesting discussion of the concept of free willSome difficult passages for readers like me, curious but not well versed in the above subjects.

⭐This is a well written, pleasant and easy read, dealing with a subject that is complex and ill understood The description of time as a subject in physics and philosophy is challenging enough, but the author manages to wrap it all with psychology and neuroscience of the brain to produce a clear account. The style of writing is erudite, and pleasing at the same time.

⭐Interesting insights into research on various ways the brain expressed and judges time at various scales.The philosophy part is almost wholey concerned with whether eternalism is true, expressed as the view that we live in a 4 dimensional block universe where all times are equally ‘real’ and the ‘now’ we inhabit is no more special than the ‘where’ we happen to be.This is seen to be highly counter intuitive for some reason and in contradiction to the subjective sense of time as a flow of events. It actually isn’t, anymore than describing the trajectory of a ball on a graph is in contradiction with the ball moving. The graph *shows* the movement of the ball and a block universe contains the flow of events on a time axis, just as a presentist description does. This confusion is repeated many times; time is often described as flowing when it can’t – it *is* the flow of events. Conversely the block universe is drained as ‘frozen’. Frozen relative to what time dimension?The real distinction between the views is what exactly about different times are ‘real’. This is a tedious discussion that requires careful definition of the various opposing claims, to which the book does not attempt.Nevertheless, interesting for the neuroscience review.

⭐Nah, just didn’t work for me. I found it mildly interesting but it suffers from being too minutely detailed in the functions of the brain at a cellular level while being scant in exploring the cosmological aspects of time.But then, if the theory of eternalism is correct this review was already determined.

⭐Incredible book, packed with so much interesting information. I enjoyed it so much that when I got the end I went back to page one and started again. A definite “must read” for anyone into the science of time.

⭐Couldn’t have enjoyed it more

⭐3 stars. It is Worth reading but it gets quite often dispersive. It looks like the author wanted to add extra length to the text by inserting unnecessary adjectives and sentences.

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